


Common (Coffee) Grounds

by peachpeach



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-08-14
Packaged: 2018-04-14 13:49:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4566900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachpeach/pseuds/peachpeach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy needed a break from scientists and weirdness, so she moved to New York and now works the late, late shift at a modest coffee shop. Bucky needed a break from the Avengers and just wanted a damn cup of black coffee, but she refused to let him drink anything less fancy than a frappuccino.</p><p>
  <b>On indefinite hiatus.</b>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Darcy was bored.

She sat at the formica countertop of a small coffee shop, flipping through a magazine from the Gap even though she knew she couldn’t afford their stuff when she was barely making minimum wage. She had a pen in her hand and began circling the stuff she’d like to buy, pressing down harder when the pen refused to release its ink. Someday she’d be able to afford these things. Eventually. Maybe. When an obscure, great-great-great-great-aunt would die and decide to leave all of her property to the twenty-five-year-old. Until then, she only wistfully circled each item she wanted.

She remembered doing the same thing as a child, only when she was a kid she was circling the pages of Oriental Trading, American Girl, and the Toys R Us holiday catalogue. She’d always circle the coolest, most expensive toys… mechanical t-rexes, Barbie dolls that came with all the bells and whistles. Little Darcy had always scoffed at getting clothes for Christmas, but young adult Darcy would now probably lowkey stab someone in order to afford White House Black Market.

Even if she could afford some swanky designer clothes, she wouldn’t be able to wear them anywhere. She only worked and then went home, worked and then went home… lather, rinse, repeat. Right now she wore her unflattering coffee shop uniform - a black polo and black pants. Her manager had tried to chew her out for her undone buttons on the polo, but had been silenced once she had buttoned them up to her neck, only to have them pop right back open when she moved. She had a big rack. It wasn’t her fault that this flimsy polo couldn’t retain her favorite assets.

Darcy looked down at the magazine. Someday she would be a fancy CEO or work in an office where she could wear something besides a boring uniform. She wouldn’t be stuck working the night shift because nobody else wanted to be stuck at a coffee shop at 11 p.m. Who needed coffee this late? Nobody.

Nobody, it seemed, except for him.

A man that Darcy had never seen before paused outside of the shop, looking at their hours and the blazingly bright OPEN sign that blinked periodically. “No, no, no, go away,” Darcy muttered under her breath. She had just finished cleaning all of the nozzles on the pop machine and scraping all of the coffee grinds off of their in-house grinder. She didn’t need to redo all of that… especially not when they closed in an hour.

The man entered. Fuck.

He looked… well, he looked kind of like a serial killer. He was wearing a hoodie that was way too big for him and he wore gloves. Fucking gloves. What would any sane person in New York be doing with gloves on in March?

“Hi,” the man said as he approached the counter, pulling a wrinkly five dollar bill from his pocket and tossing it onto the surface. Someone had drawn a giant handlebar mustache on Lincoln in bright blue marker. “Can I get a plain black coffee?”

Darcy looked at him, trying to get past his too-big hoodie and scruffy face. His blue eyes were bright, but they had dark circles underneath them. He looked like somebody who needed a hug, a fuzzy blanket, some chicken soup, and a marathon of Parks and Recreation. He did not, however, look like somebody who needed to choke down a cup of shitty black coffee at 11 p.m.

“Nope,” she said, smacking her hand on the counter and tossing his five dollar bill back at him. “Nope. I can’t do that to you, man. I’m sorry. The plain coffee sucks. It would just make your shitty day shittier.”

He stared at her. Darcy flushed as she realized what she had said. “I mean… it would make your bad day worse. Sorry for, ah, the language,” she muttered, hoping he would not fill out one of the comment cards that were sitting on top of the display case full of doughnuts. She had already been warned twice about cursing; Darcy did not need a third strike on her record.

“You’re sorry?” he questioned and she tensed. Here it came. The privileged whining about how he wanted to speak to her manager about her unprofessionalism. But instead, his eyes sparked and he deadpanned, “You fuckin’ should be.”

She smiled, pointing to a stool that was pulled up to the counter. “My man. Sit your butt down. I will get you something better than coffee.”

He obliged, sitting on one of the squeaky metal chairs. As Darcy found him a deep mug, he peeled off his hoodie.

“I’m so relieved you don’t have a machine gun under there,” she said nonchalantly as she began filing one of the prep cups with cinnamon syrup and apple juice. Darcy nodded toward his shirt, which was plain gray and long-sleeved. Still weird that he was wearing gloves and had a long-sleeved shirt on, but it was a lot less scary than a big black hoodie.

The man froze, flexing his fingers slowly. “Why would I have a machine gun?”

“I thought you were a serial killer. Are you a serial killer? Cause if you are, know that if you kill me… you’re fucked, dude,” she thought of Thor. She hadn’t seen him (or her former boss) in about a year, but occasionally she still passed an email back and forth with Jane. Thor was too busy superheroing it up to visit some girl who had tasered him once and Jane was probably doing some weird science with Tony Stark. But if she got murdered, she imagined Thor would smite this guy down. “I’ve got connections.”

“I just wanted coffee.”

“At eleven at night? And who doesn’t have a coffee maker in their house? I understand wanting a frappe or whatever and not being able to make it at your house, but plain black coffee?” Darcy said, adding cream and two generous shots of espresso to the prep cup. She gave it a quick stir with a large spoon and then stabbed the spoon in his direction. “Pretty serial killer-ish.”

He scowled. “What are you making?” he questioned, leaning in his seat to get a better look at what she was doing behind the counter.

“I am making you an apple pie frappuccino.”

“What?”

“It’s delicious. You’ll love it. Unless, wait, are you allergic to apples?” she questioned, giving the spoon a quick lick before tossing it into the stainless steel sink. Darcy turned on a machine, emptying the contents of the prep cup and poking a few buttons. “I hope you like frappuccinos. Some guys have weird complexes about drinking what they think are traditionally feminine drinks. Which is unfortunate, cause when you-”

“What the fuck is a frappuccino?” he asked, watching the machine whir around.

Darcy blinked. “You’ve never heard of a frappuccino?”

“I’ve been out of the country for a while,” he said slowly. “Bit out of the loop.”

“Oh. It's like if a frappe and a cappuccino had a baby,” Darcy said, finding a deep glass mug and drizzling caramel syrup along the side. “Technically I think Starbucks owns the trademark... but nobody gives a shit about this little coffee shop, so nobody is going to sue us.”

The man didn’t answer, just watched her as she dumped the contents from the blender into his cup. When she was finished she topped the frozen mixture with whipped cream and more drizzled caramel, sliding it in front of him. “Voila.”

He shot her a skeptical face as he grabbed a straw from a container on the countertop, peeling off its white wrapper and sticking it into his frozen drink. “Looks like a milkshake,” he said, taking a tentative sip. His eyebrows rose in surprise.

“Good, right?” Darcy asked, pouring the leftover frappuccino into a cup for herself. She smiled as he just nodded, latched onto the straw like there was no tomorrow. “I guess that’s a yes.”

They sat in silence as he sucked down the frappuccino. Eventually, Darcy finished hers and began to disassemble the machine she had used to make it. She ran warm, soapy water into the stainless steel sink and dropped the various machinery parts into the water.

Darcy went around the small coffee shop, collecting forgotten spoons that had fallen onto the floor. When she passed the man, she reached for his now-empty glass, sweeping it up and depositing into the soapy sink. He didn’t say anything as she took it from him, nor did he say anything as she began to scrub dishes in the sink. He didn’t even say anything when she began to sweep the entire shop again, even though she had just done so before he had first entered the shop.

“So where were you?” she asked finally, cutting through the silence. Normally there would have been some soft indie music playing, but when Darcy was alone in the coffee shop, she liked to turn it off. The same playlist tended to play over and over, so by now she had heard enough A Fine Frenzy and Owl City to last a lifetime.

“Hmm?” he asked absently, swiveling in his chair to watch her as she began to stack chairs on top of tables.

“You said you were out of the country. Where were you?”

“Oh,” he said, his eyes drifting around the shop. “I was in Europe.”

“Cool,” Darcy said, grunting slightly as she lifted up what felt like the eighty thousandth chair in the shop. In reality it was a tiny shop and there were only five tables, but she was more out of shape than she’d like to admit. “I went to London once. For work. It kind of sucked.”

“My time in Europe kind of sucked, too,” he said, a kind of sly smirk falling across his face. Darcy wondered if she wasn’t missing some kind of joke, but he offered no further explanation even when she stopped and looked at him.

He didn’t seem like he wanted to talk very much after that, so Darcy went about her business in silence. She mopped around him, wiped the counter down around him, and turned the neon OPEN sign off with a flick of a switch.

“Wait, shit, did you want me to make you something else?” she asked after a moment, eying her pile of clean and drying dishes. “Did you want something to go? Is that what you were waiting on?”

“No,” he said slowly. “I just… liked the quiet. Wanted to sit for a while.”

Relief flowed through her. “Thank God. If I had been ignoring you when you wanted a coffee or something I would have died of embarrassment.”

“Reminds me,” he said, pulling the same wrinkly five from his wallet again. He held it out to her with his gloved fingers. “For the... “

“Frappuccino,” she said with a grin, grabbing her purse from beneath the counter and flicking off the kitchen lights. “Nah, no problem. It’s too late to charge you for it. I already shut the register down.”

He studied her, still holding the five dollar bill loosely in his hand. “No, you didn’t.”

Darcy scowled, going to pull open the door to the shop. The bell above the entrance jangled merrily. “Yeah, well. Just shut up and accept the free caffeine, okay? I gotta do something nice every once in a while. Keeps my karma in check.”

He brushed against her as she held the door open for her. Once they were both out, she pulled the door behind her and locked it securely.

“Well,” Darcy said, very aware that he was standing there and looking at her expectantly. Finally, she awkwardly offered him her hand to shake. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” he agreed, hesitantly reaching with his hand to shake hers. His glove was soft, sleek leather and his touch was gentle. She could barely feel any pressure as he shook her hand.

“Well, uhm,” she said awkwardly, jerking a thumb over her shoulder. “I’m this way. So… bye?”

“See you later,” he amended with the same spark in his eye he had had earlier, a grin tugging up one corner of his mouth. He turned with a small wave, heading in the opposite direction of her. Darcy stood for a few seconds, allowing herself to indulge in the view of his long legs clad in well-fitting jeans. It was an okay end to a long night.

When she got home and kicked off her black work pants to wash them before her next shift, she turned out all of her pockets as she normally did. Once she had discovered she had accidentally left a bunch of crayons in one pocket and that hadn’t been fun to fish out of her washing machine.

This time, what she discovered in her back pocket made her flush. It was a wrinkly five dollar bill. Lincoln innocently stared up at her like he had been there all along, blue handlebar mustache included.


	2. Chapter 2

“Buck?”

Bucky frowned as he entered the common area of the apartment he shared with Steve, who was sitting on one of their too-soft couches. Everything in this new place was too soft. The sheets and blankets that covered his too-soft mattress were also too soft. Whenever he took a shower, he always plucked a warm, overly plush towel from a towel warmer, something that both Steve and Bucky had insisted they didn’t need but Tony had installed in every apartment in the Avengers Tower anyway.

“Earth to Bucky. Are you okay?” Steve asked, flipping through one of the high-powered tablets that Stark had given them as a gift. The light from the tablet was one of the only lights on the apartment, besides a little end table lamp next to Steve and the under-cabinet lighting in the open kitchen. “Where were you?”

“I was out,” Bucky said, kicking his shoes off. Steve always left his neatly by the front door, but Bucky left a trail of shoes and socks as he went over to flop onto the couch.

“Yeah, I got that part,” Steve said, rolling his eyes. He tossed a pillow at Bucky. “Punk. Do you wanna be a little more specific? I get worried, you know, when you leave and don’t tell anyone where you’re going. Parts of HYDRA still exist. I don’t know if they’ve got you or if you’ve decided to go after them with that hard-headed attitude you’ve still got.”

Bucky shrugged, trying to avoid the worried look on Steve’s face. They had only been reunited for a few months, but Steve was always worrying. Always checking in, always asking how he was, always carefully treading around. “I was just getting coffee,” he said finally. This seemed to satisfy Steve, who sank down a little more into his chair.

“We’ve got coffee here if you ever want some. Thor loves it, so he bought us a big crate of some coffee he likes,” Steve said, nodding toward their open kitchen. “I can show you how to use the machine if you need help.”

Now it was Bucky’s turn to roll his eyes. “I think I can figure out how to use a damn coffee machine, Stevie.”

Steve just gave a little laugh, returning to flipping through his tablet. “Says the guy who couldn’t run the remote.”

“It’s got a lot of damn buttons on it, alright?” Bucky asked, bristling as he tossed the pillow back at Steve who was now just laughing hard, clutching his chest with one hand. “Fuck you, pal.”

“Fuck you, too,” Steve said between laughs, picking up the remote on the coffee table between him. He randomly jabbed at buttons, reenacting Bucky’s misadventure with the piece of technology. When Bucky stood and headed to his bedroom, Steve finally stopped laughing long enough to say, “Night!”

Bucky didn’t say it back. And Bucky did not sleep. He waited until he heard the familiar creak of Steve’s bed in the other room and then waited another three hours before he got up and headed into the bathroom to take a long, hot shower.

He weirdly thought about his excursion into the city while he was rubbing shampoo into his hair. It had been better than waiting around in the Avengers Tower while Stark did some upgrades on the New Avengers Facility. People tended to want to talk to each other in the Tower and Bucky wasn’t much for talking.

At least, he wasn’t much for talking to people who knew about the Winter Soldier. He had talked to that coffee shop woman pretty easily, but maybe that was just because she herself had been talkative. She had known when he didn’t feel like talking, though; the silence was very comfortable when she had been closing up for the night.

He wished he was back there right now. He was tired of how Steve seemed to always be walking on eggshells around him, worried that he’d snap back into Winter Soldier mode or he’d leave one day and never return. The woman... Bucky suddenly realized he had never gotten her name. She hadn’t been wearing a name tag; he would have noticed. He would have remembered. His training made him notice little details.

It had also made him carefully watch to make sure she hadn’t added anything to his cup that he couldn’t identify, but that was neither here nor there.

Bucky finished his shower and crawled back into bed without putting any clothes on. The sheets were cold against his warm skin and he finally fell asleep just as the sun was rising.

Unfortunately, Steve tried to wake him up just after the sun rose.

“Get the fuck out of here before I kill you,” Bucky mumbled, throwing one of his many pillows at the door. Steve ducked, letting it hit the wall behind him. “I didn’t get to sleep until an hour ago.”

“Cause you drank coffee at midnight,” Steve said, but he pulled the door behind him as he left.

Coffee. Fuck, it sounded appealing. The caffeine wouldn’t really help since his metabolism would burn it off quickly, but the taste made him feel better anyway. Besides, it was a good excuse to get out of Stark’s tower.

He glanced at the clock. It was a little past eight in the morning. Probably too early for the woman from the coffee shop to be doing another shift, unless she had a particularly unreasonable manager.

Bucky sat up, dragging himself to his mostly-empty dresser. He didn’t have very much to choose from; though Bucky had money he hadn’t yet got around to shopping for himself, so most of his clothes were either gifts or had once belonged to Steve. The obnoxious looking band t-shirts that Tony had given him were ignored and he grabbed a soft long-sleeved raglan from Natasha and a pair of dark jeans.

Ten minutes later he emerged from the apartment, hair combed and teeth brushed. He put a hand to his chin; his beard was getting a little out of control. He hadn’t trimmed it or cut his hair since joining the Avengers a few months ago and it was starting to make him unrecognizable when he looked into the mirror.

Too late now. He was already out of the apartment and heading down the long hallway to the elevator. Bucky flinched slightly as a voice came over the relaxing elevator music. He still wasn’t used to Friday, Tony’s new AI. “Good morning, Sergeant Barnes,” she said, pleasant as always. “I have a message from Captain Rogers. He requests your presence in the training room at noon.”

“Right… go ahead and tell him I’ll be there,” Bucky said, leaning against one of the silver handrails in the elevator. The AI did not respond, which he felt a little guilty about. Friday had probably picked up on his uneasiness with her by now.

There was no time to dwell on whether the not-really-a-person person liked him, though, because the elevator dinged to announce they had reached the lobby of the Avengers Tower. He stepped out, pushing through the entrance’s glass doors and heading out onto the street.

The coffee shop wasn’t very far away. It took him no time at all to get there, even though he seemed to hit every DO NOT WALK signal possible. Bucky pulled on the handle of the coffee shop, eyes already scanning the small place for the woman from last night. She wasn’t there, he found out quickly. At least, she wasn’t at the counter.

“What can I get ya?”

Bucky blinked, realizing he had been standing awkwardly at the counter for a few seconds, just looking around the small place. “Uhh,” he rubbed his chin, glancing at the friendly-looking redhead behind the counter. “I was looking for somebody, actually.”

“Oh, are you meeting someone here?” she asked.

“No, I mean… I was looking for somebody who works here,” he said, trying to peer into the coffee shop’s small kitchen as another employee emerged, making the silver door swing back and forth. “I don’t know her name.”

“Well…” the redhead pursed her lips. “Can you tell me what she looks like?”

“Brown hair. Ahh…” The phrase ‘good ass’ popped into his head, but Bucky beat it away quickly. He didn’t need this girl to think he was some kind of lecherous pervert. “She was working last night.”

“Oh. Darcy. Yeah. She’s not here right now…” the woman hesitated. “I don’t think I’m supposed to give you her schedule or anything… I can’t tell you when her next shift is if you’re looking for her. Privacy and stuff. I’m sure you’re not dangerous or anything, but-”

“It’s fine. I just thought I’d stop by and check,” Bucky said with a nod, pulling out two bucks and tucking them into a vintage-looking coffee tin that had been marked TIPS. “Thanks.”

The woman smiled at him, but Bucky did not feel like smiling back at her as he turned around and left the shop. She had been nice, he knew, but he didn’t feel like forcing a returning grin. He walked slowly back to the Tower, hands in his pocket. Darcy. It was an unusual name. He couldn’t remember ever meeting anyone named Darcy before. Then again, he couldn’t ever remember meeting anyone who had refused to give him a coffee, either.

Bucky punched in a code on the pad just outside of the entrance to the Tower, then pressed his fingertip to a scanner. One of the glass doors nearby unlocked and he headed through it and back to the elevator. This time, the elevator wasn’t empty.

“Ah, James!” The man boomed, clapping a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “It is nice to see you again.”

Thor gave him a wide, genuine smile, and this time Bucky smiled back. He found that Thor generally had that effect on people. He was so enthusiastic and caring, stopping to ask even the newest interns about their day that Bucky didn’t feel like Thor felt obligated to say hello to the Winter Soldier. He actually wanted to.

“What have you been up to?” Bucky asked, leaning against the silver rails as the elevator zoomed up toward the private living quarters.

“I have been assisting in the search for Banner,” he said, this time not smiling. “He is a man who knows how to disappear. I have attempted to enlist the help of my friend, Heimdall, who sees all across every realm. If there is anyone who can locate the doctor, it will be him... I had to return from my searching prematurely, however. I promised Jane I would take her and her intern… on a spree? A shopping spree, if I understood correctly.”

Bucky nodded. “Sounds fun.”

Thor smiled again as the elevator stopped, dinging as the doors opened on the residential floor. “I have no doubt it will be. Do you wish to join us?”

The pair walked down the long hall, stopping at Bucky and Steve’s door. “I have to get some food in me before I go train with Steve later,” he said, shaking his head as the door unlocked with his touch. Never having to carry a key was one of the perks of Stark’s tech, he guessed. “Rain check, pal?”

“Ah, do not concern yourself,” Thor said with a nod of understanding. “I have already checked the weather with Jane’s tablet. It is not supposed to rain. Would dampen the shopping spree. I shall see you another time, then, James.”

“See ya,” Bucky said, watching Thor head down the hallway to the apartment he shared with Dr. Foster. He shut the door behind him, intent on scrambling on at least a dozen eggs for himself. He sat down on one of the too-soft couches, though, and was suddenly very, very aware of how tired he was. Even with the serum working to power a sleep-deprived body, he could only go so long without a proper night’s sleep… when had that last happened? A week ago?

He tried to count back the days, tried to find an answer to when he had last slept a full night, but he didn’t get to try for very long before he was unconscious in a deep, deep sleep.

“Sergeant Barnes. I apologize for waking you, but Captain Rogers is inquiring about your location.”

Bucky sat up with a start, confused. It felt like he had been asleep for about ten minutes, but the clock on the wall told him it had been almost three hours. “Oh, shit,” he said, standing quickly from the couch and jogging into his room, tearing through his dresser drawers. He pulled his training clothes from his bottom drawer. They were simple: a plain sleeveless black shirt and some shorts that Steve had called ‘basketball shorts.’

“Sergeant Barnes-” Friday’s polite voice rang out again as he tried to straighten his hair in the bathroom mirror, trying to look like he had been conscious the entire time.

“What?”

“Would you like me to inform Captain Rogers that you are on your way, sir?”

“Yeah, do that!” Bucky called, dashing through the apartment’s door and down the hallway. He impatiently pushed the elevator’s button several times, willing it to come faster so he wouldn’t be quite as late. His eyes slid to the stairs. The training room wasn’t that many floors up…

Ding.

The elevator doors slid open. “Greetings once again, James!” Thor called, his eyes settling on Bucky’s hand, which had been on the handle to the stairs. “Are you in a hurry?”

“Yeah, kind of. S’posed to meet Steve for training.”

“Ah, well, do not let us delay you,” Thor said, looking apologetic as he held up his hands, which were full of bags from stores that Bucky didn’t recognize. “We shall vacate the elevator for you, so you might get there all the faster.”

Dr. Foster - no, Jane, she had said to call her Jane - exited, holding a few bags of her own in one arm. She smiled. “Hi,” she said, but Bucky wasn’t paying attention. He was more concerned with Jane’s other arm, which was threaded through the elbow of a familiar looking coffee shop barista.


End file.
